Page 12 of Beautiful Beast

“Adam.” His voice sounds different, and I can’t figure out why. Maybe it’s just because we haven’t spoken in so long. “Now that you’re back in the city, I really must see you.”

I’m going to need my strength for this conversation, so I rip open the box – she even tied it with a red bow – and bite into one of the cookies.

Hopefully, she didn’t poison them.

“Is it about Townsend Enterprises?” I ask.

Belle definitely inherited Annie’s skills in the kitchen, and I’ve already stuffed another cookie into my mouth by the time I’m done asking the question to which I already know the answer.

Now I’m picturing Belle in a tiny apron and nothing else, and have to bite back a groan.

“Yes, but it’s a bit different than what you’re assuming.”

The family business is the reason I’m living in a place like this one. It’s where I grew up, but it doesn’t hold many happy memories. It was a prison after my mom died, and it’s become a prison again now.

After the old man finally kicked the bucket, I gutted the apartment and had it professionally decorated to eradicate all traces of him.

I should have just sold it and moved on, but it’s the last physical space my mom occupied. I wasn’t ready to let go of my last connection to the only woman who’s ever truly loved me.

I’m still not.

“You know I respect you, Uncle Dennis, but I’m not taking over the business.”

When my dad died, the media had a field day that the King of Wall Street left his throne. His image in the press didn’t match the monster he was at home behind closed doors. And everyone assumed the Prince of Wall Street would take his rightful place.

But I didn’t, and my uncle took over instead.

Doing the exact opposite of what my dad wanted was the best way to say fuck you.

And I have no intention of changing my mind.

“I need you to come to see me,” Uncle Dennis insists. “It’s important.”

Leaving the house isn’t an option for me right now. And since no one in my family approved of my career choice, I don’t really want to explain what happened to me in Syria. Even if it’s not said, they’ll all think it was my own fault.

Maybe it was.

But it can’t be undone now, and I don’t need the judgment, even if it’s silent.

“You won’t convince me to change my mind whether we’re on the phone or in person,” I say, hoping the same old refrain will get through to my uncle this time. “I don’t have any interest in running my father’s company.”

“And I’ve always respected that decision,” Uncle Dennis says, and it’s mostly true.

He understood the damage my childhood did to me, but at least once a year, he asks what my plans are and when I intend to take over because he isn’t getting any younger. I always put him off, and he’s done all the work on my behalf while my trust fund pays the bills.

This must be one of the yearly check-ins.

“So then–”

“This is different,” he asserts.

I pinch the bridge of my nose as frustration fills me. It’s not that I have big life plans now that I’m retired from combat. And I need to fill my days withsomething. I’ll have to figure out what I want to do, but it isn’t being President and CEO of Townsend Enterprises.

“Uncle Dennis–”

“Adam, I’m dying.”

Chapter 4

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